from the own-worst-enemy dept

Top Comcast Lobbyist (sorry, Chief Diversity Officer) David Cohen was a one-man disinformation firestorm during Comcast's doomed acquisition of Time Warner Cable. Cohen has a nasty habit of spearheading greasy practices -- like paying minority groups to parrot bad public policy positions to create the illusion of diverse support -- then pretending to be outraged when these connections were highlighted. Cohen also amusingly declared that those opposed to the company's merger ambitions were ignorant and unreasonable, without a single supportable fact to be shared among them.

That's why it was pretty interesting to watch such a master of spin candidly acknowledge that Comcast has only itself to blame for Netflix's rise as an Internet video powerhouse. Calling Netflix the company's "ultimate frenemy" at a recent telecom conference, Cohen admitted that streaming services like Netflix were a self-inflicted gunshot wound, created in large part because the cable ecosystem charges way too much money for its services:

"While Cohen sees Netflix as a complement to Comcast’s cable offering, he acknowledges that streaming services, especially those that offer slimmer video packages like Sling TV and Sony PlayStation Vue, could potentially be more attractive to price-conscious consumers. "Part of this is a self-inflicted wound," Cohen said. “We have made video too expensive."

A cable or broadcast executive admitting they've refused to compete on price is a rare animal indeed, and even more rare from a legendary obfuscationist like Cohen. Normally, Comcast has downplayed their slow quarterly hemorrhaging of video subscribers, while Netflix, in contrast, added 3.3 million subscribers last quarter alone. Like most cable execs, the folks at Comcast are so used to a pampered duopoly, they see price competition as a vile alien abomination, justified in part by the millions of consumers that continue to pay an arm and a leg for bloated, over-priced lineups of unwatched channels.

These executives also honestly believe their inflexible legacy empires are able to out-innovate price competition by releasing abysmal "me too" products. Products like Comcast's recently launched and widely-ridiculed "Stream" platform, which is laden with so many caveats as to make it largely irrelevant in full competitive context.

Of course Cohen also got to the modern meat of the issue, reminding attendees at one point that no matter how large Netflix gets, it still needs to come through Comcast to get to its customers:

"Cohen added while some fear that more Netflix customers means less cable customers, he reminded the audience that reliable broadband is a crucial element of the streaming service. “Remember, you can’t get Netflix without broadband service,” Cohen said. “Those are 3 million customers of our broadband service."

And that's the rub. At the end of the day, Comcast still intends to grab its pound of flesh one way or the other, whether that's by forcing Netflix to pay direct interconnection fees, or by slowly expanding the company's usage cap and overage fee trials and hoping nobody notices. Either way, Comcast will continue to do absolutely everything in its power to avoid having to compete on price for as long as humanly possible. But as they say, admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery.

from the promises-with-expiration-dates dept

Charter Communications is desperately trying to avoid the same fate that befell Comcast's doomed acquisition of Time Warner Cable. As noted recently, Charter hired long-standing net neutrality advocate Marvin Ammori to craft its promise to adhere to (most) of the FCC's new net neutrality rules for three years, regardless of whether the rules are overturned in court. Charter's also promising to avoid the implementation of usage caps and overages during that same time period, something most ISPs are hungrily eyeing in order to protect legacy TV revenues from Internet video.

But Charter's also now taking things one step further. In a new filing with the FCC, Charter declares the company will avoid screwing up the Internet for a whopping total of three years, and provide free interconnection to any large content or transit provider that adheres to certain traffic load and point of presence (POP) criteria. Three years obviously will go by in a flash, and the laundry list of criteria is long, giving Charter ample room (like any good merger condition) to wiggle over, under and around a notable chunk of the promise.

Still, the promising was enough to make Netflix happy, the company stating in their own filing with the FCC that getting free interconnection for three years was enough for them to be willing to sign off on the industry's latest mega-merger:

"This new policy and the commitment to apply it across the ‘New Charter’ footprint is a substantial public-interest benefit and will support scaling the Internet to meet consumers’ growing demand for online services and help foster continued innovation across the Internet ecosystem. Accordingly, Netflix supports the proposed Charter Time Warner Cable transaction if it incorporates the merger condition proposed by Charter."

If you recall, Netflix and transit operators have spent the last two years accusing last mile ISPs of intentionally letting transit points degrade in order to kill settlement-free peering and force Netflix into costly new direct interconnection deals. The problem is since both sides keep these business deals aggressively private, there hasn't been enough hard data to prove it (even though we're getting closer). Regardless, the mere threat of real net neutrality rules (you remember, the rules that were supposed to destroy the Internet) appear to have put the kibosh on a large chunk of this ugly infighting.

Needless to say, Netflix's approval appears to have come relatively cheap, but real consumer advocates I've spoken to are far from impressed with the three year window on any of Charter's promises, even with Ammori's involvement. As such they're pushing hard to either have the condition length extended significantly (five years or higher) or blocked altogether, since promising to play nice isn't worth all that much if your promise has an expiration date. It's worth reminding readers that while Charter's whispering sweet nothings in the ears of regulators and Netflix, it's simultaneously suing to destroy the FCC's new neutrality rules, ensuring that there's no mechanism in place to police Charter once the promised window for good behavior closes.

from the learn-to-compete dept

So far, legacy cable operators have crafted an ingenious, two-pronged response to the rising threat of internet video competition. One, mindlessly raise programming and equipment rental rates (since we all know that traditional cable TV is a cash cow that will live forever). Two, pretend to be innovative. This latter part doesn't have to consist of much; you have to do just enough to make it look like you give a shit about television's evolution, like offer a sloppy Hulu clone under your own brand, or launch a "me too" streaming service with so many caveats to make it largely useless.

That's apparently Comcast's MO with the launch of its new creatively named "Stream" internet video streaming service. According to the company's announcement, Comcast's Stream service will offer users a handful of channels (including HBO) with ads, for $15 a month. The biggest caveats: you can only use the service if you're a Comcast "Xfinity" broadband customer, and you can only use the service while at home on your Comcast Wi-Fi connection. It's yet another cable industry attempt to keep cord-cutters in house by offering them something that looks like innovation, but falls well short of the mark.

Comcast and other cable operators are obsessed with the false belief that you can create such wonderful, amazing walled gardens that traditional cable users will somehow be impervious to obscene pricing and will never want to leave. That's the mindset behind the industry's TV Everywhere initiative, and it's a mindset on proud display here. But when you actually look at the pricing and value proposition on display, it's pretty clear where Comcast still thinks it can steer users:

"Here’s some quick math: Comcast sells Internet at different prices in different markets, but right now a basic broadband-only subscription in its home market of Philadelphia is $67 a month. Add in the cost of Stream and you’re up to $82 a month. But Comcast sells a basic TV + Broadband package, including HBO, for $45 a month. You will want to read the fine print when you compare the two offers.** But you might reasonably conclude that Comcast would still rather sell you cable TV than Web TV."

Gosh, yes, you might just reasonably conclude that. Comcast (like all cable operators) is stuck between a rock and a hard place. If it offers a truly disruptive, well-priced internet streaming service, it will start heavily cannibalizing all of the customers currently paying an arm and a leg for traditional television. The answer? Cable will have to do the unthinkable and begin competing on price, offering traditional cable TV and streaming capabilities and a better bundle price. Yes, the reduction in quarterly revenues is going to make investors and executives cry over their lattes, but it's a smarter play over the long haul than responding to fleeing, cost-conscious customers with the inept one-two punch of yet more rate hikes and the pretense of innovation.

from the recently-watched:-Taken-1-3,-Once-Upon-a-Time-in-Mexico dept

The internet has been tripping up dumb criminals since its inception. Police used to have to raid residences for incriminating Polaroids. Now, the criminals are saving them that step. Hashtagged bragging combined with location-tagged photos of criminal behavior has Darwinned the stupidest criminals right into the hands of local law enforcement. Not resetting stolen devices to "factory settings" after stealing them also snags a few thieves, who can easily be tracked by their victims.

But in this case, it wasn't social media or HTC Pocket Narc 4G selling out these alleged child abductors. It was music and movies.

After [accused kidnapper Brittany] Nunn no-showed for a custody exchange in the early days of December, investigators went to her Wellington home and found indications she and [accused accomplice Peter] Barr, 33, had apparently left in a hurry.

Early indications suggested the family may have been in Minnesota where Nunn had family. But those tips never panned out, leaving [Drew] Weber and other investigators with a search unlike thousands of other custody disputes.

The case inched forward as days turned to weeks.

Then, a break.

Drawing on new investigative tactics, Weber executed a search warrant and pulled records from Nunn's Spotify account. He found it was being used from an IP address in Mexico. He later pulled search records from Netflix and Nunn's other accounts and eventually tracked a package that Nunn had ordered to be shipped to Cabo San Lucas.

Neither company at this point offer a Transparency Report detailing requests from governments and law enforcement agencies for user information. And neither would offer any comment on this story. But this would seem to be a good time for both to consider providing this information going forward.

At this point, the only references to law enforcement activity on either site pertains to reports of fraudulent activity related to unapproved charges or stolen credentials. But obviously any service that tracks IP addresses, user activity, location data or other internet detritus is susceptible to examination by law enforcement. Services like these that are infrequently served by investigators are likely far less prepared (or willing) to challenge subpoenas.

In this case, an actual search warrant appears to have been issued, which would make the return of applicable information almost automatic.

In any case, with previous news that intelligence/law enforcement agencies using everything from Instagram to Angry Birds to locate criminals/terrorists, this news shouldn't be all that surprising, even if the sources of the information are somewhat novel.

Convenience frequently trumps privacy, and having movies and music on tap instantly is something most people would find difficult to give up. Kudos to law enforcement for finding yet another way to track someone down, but those more privacy-minded are going to need to weigh instant access against the wealth of information collected by these services. Netflix -- thanks to pressure from rights holders -- has been forced to show a public frowny face re: VPN usage, and Spotify -- as another IP-reliant service -- is likely to do the same if the issue arises. If this pressure continues, it will be your privacy or your access, rather than a more balanced exchange.

from the tax-the-future dept

Almost exactly three years ago, Mike wrote up a post that discussed Planet Money pulling together five economists with differing political views to see what they could all agree on. The result was several policy ideas that appeared to transcend politics if economics was the driving motivator instead of any kind of partisanship. The whole post is awesome, and has influenced my thoughts on economic policy and taxes to a large degree, but I came away from it with one general concept firmly in mind: tax what you want to discourage, don't tax what you want to encourage, and never tax innovation or the future.

A ruling by Chicago’s Department of Finance allows the city to add an extra nine percent tax onto “electronically delivered amusements” and “nonpossessory computer leases.” In an odd combination, buying a subscription to streaming media, such as Netflix or Spotify, would qualify, as would using a cloud computing platform, such as Amazon Web Services. Each would be subject to 9% tax; Chicago is the first major American city to levy a tax on either streaming services or cloud computing services.

Amusement taxes in and of themselves generally violate the concept I highlighted in the opening. After all, if you're a municipality, taxing fun is essentially saying you want less fun. But what makes this re-write of the amusement tax already on the books silly is that it is purely a money-grab. Here's what happened: the amusement tax in Chicago worked primarily to collect revenue from book stores, music stores and movie rental stores, which are obviously becoming increasingly in short supply as consumers move to online stores and streaming services like Netflix and Spotify and Amazon for all of the above. This is actually a good thing from a public interest standpoint for a variety of reasons: less pollution from physical products, more efficiency in the marketplace, the opening of more creative outlets for members of the city, and more access to more content from more places and devices, meaning a more robust economic marketplace. The future, in other words, although increasingly the present as well. And Chicago wants to tax all this, effectively discouraging its use, in order to collect an additional $12 million a year.

Chicago, mind you, is in the hole for roughly one hundred times that amount.

Cities with amusement taxes have lost revenue as more people forgo book stores, record shops and video rental stores in place of online outlets. But $12 million isn’t going to be much more than a drop of water in the bucket of the city’s $1 billion operating shortfall.

Fighting the future doesn't even yield much of a reward, so why do it at all? Don't tax what you want to encourage and tax what you want to discourage. This makes it look like the city of Chicago really wants a tax policy to make the city operate like it was 1995.

from the monsters-don't-go-away-when-you-ignore-them dept

If you didn't know, Netflix is kind of huge. So huge, in fact, that some new analysis suggests that if Netflix was a Nielsen-rated TV network, the service would, sometime within a year, attain a larger 24-hour audience than ABC, CBS, NBC or Fox. That's something Nielsen itself should probably be tracking, but as we've noted previously, Nielsen has painfully lagged on actually tracking the cord cutting revolution, for fear of upsetting cable and broadcast executives with their heads planted squarely in the sand.

The analysts at FBR Capital Markets note that Netflix served 10 billion hours of internet video content in the first quarter of the year, roughly two hours per subscriber per day. By dividing this two-hour figure by 24 hours, then multiplying it by the number of U.S. Netflix subscribers as a percentage of households, the analysts estimate Netflix would see a Q1 ratings score of 2.6, on par with both ABC and NBC. The difference, of course, is that Netflix is growing quickly while traditional cable broadcasters are losing market share, especially on the kids programming front.

Of course, the fact that Nielsen can't join the modern era and track TV viewing over the internet suggests this isn't quite yet an apples-to-apples comparison:

"One major caveat: Nielsen TV ratings cover, at most, up to seven days of VOD and DVR viewing — and exclude online-video views, which networks say are an increasing part of the pie. Moreover, TV networks provide a different blend of content, such as live sports, that Netflix doesn’t. And anyway, Netflix doesn’t care about “ratings” of individual shows, given that it doesn’t sell ads and has steadfastly refused to disclose anything but general data about viewing."

Except Variety may overstate this, since the cable industry's "TV Everywhere" initiative (which lets users watch cable content on their iPads and other devices in the hopes of keeping them from cutting the cord) is a bit of a dud. Cable video on demand viewing has been in the toilet for some time as well. And while sports is where cable still outshines internet video (for now), the cable and broadcast apparatus isn't helping its case by failing to improve customer service, yet relentlessly driving up rates in the face of this increased competition. As such, people generally like Netflix's value proposition more:

"Another data point called out by FBR’s analysts: When consumers were asked if they had to choose between Netflix and a cable or satellite TV subscription, 57% picked Netflix, with 43% opting for pay TV, according to a survey FBR conducted with ClearVoice Research in April. "Netflix subscribers clearly like it more than pay TV, which we see as arguing for pricing leverage, since pay TV, on average, costs over $80 per month,” the analysts wrote, citing Netflix’s average $8 price point."

And things are going to get worse. Netflix is already leading the charge toward 4K and HDR content, something the cable industry (and especially the telcos using fiber to the node or DSL) won't have the bandwidth to deliver for years. And while the cable industry loses subscribers slowly to cord cutting, Netflix is busy growing internationally, with plans to offer service in 200 different countries by the end of this year. Apparently, burying your head in the sand and pretending cord cutting wasn't real didn't magically stop the future from arriving anyway. Who knew?

from the network-shenanigans dept

While filing a net neutrality complaint is now easier than ever, actually identifying violations may not be. In the new age of interconnection, usage caps, overages, and pay-to-play zero rating deals, less technical users simply may not understand when they're being screwed by their ISP, as these violations aren't nearly as ham-fistedly obvious as outright blocking or throttling of services. That's why the Open Technology Institute’s MLAB recently introduced the Internet health test, which runs user connections through a bevy of speed and performance tests to determine whether or not ISPs are engaged in any shenanigans.

Last October, MLAB released a study (pdf) that strongly supported Netflix, Level3 and Cogent's claims that ISPs were intentionally letting peering points to transit operators saturate to try and force companies like Netflix to begin paying for direct interconnection. In short, neutrality advocates believe ISPs had moved net neutrality to the edge of the network, using interconnection to grab the pound of flesh from content companies they've long stated was their end goal.

The problem is both sides of the equation (whether that's Netflix or AT&T) keep most of their data on interconnection (and the deals they strike) private for competitive reasons, meaning that while signs (and thirty years of history) pointed to ISP skulduggery, actually proving it is difficult. It's apparently becoming less difficult with the new consumer connection data being collected by MLAB, which the Guardian this week claimed proves big ISPs are intentionally degrading network performance across some networks:

"The study, conducted by internet activists BattlefortheNet, looked at the results from 300,000 internet users and found significant degradations on the networks of the five largest internet service providers (ISPs), representing 75% of all wireline households across the US...In Atlanta, for example, Comcast provided hourly median download speeds over a CDN called GTT of 21.4 megabits per second at 7pm throughout the month of May. AT&T provided speeds over the same network of ⅕ of a megabit per second. When a network sends more than twice the traffic it receives, that network is required by AT&T to pay for the privilege."

This is, consumer advocate group Free Press claims, proof positive that ISPs are up to no good:

"For too long, internet access providers and their lobbyists have characterized net neutrality protections as a solution in search of a problem,” said Karr. “Data compiled using the Internet Health Test show us otherwise – that there is widespread and systemic abuse across the network. The irony is that this trove of evidence is becoming public just as many in Congress are trying to strip away the open internet protections that would prevent such bad behavior."

The problem? While the Guardian report references a "new study," no study has actually been released that I could find (MLAB apparently just shared some selective data with The Guardian). That brings us back to the fact that the biggest problem here continues to be a lack of transparency on the part of all the players involved. But it's pretty hard to claim a "study" proves much of anything when there's no actual study, suggesting some over-eagerness on the parts of consumer advocates here.

Shortly after the Guardian piece MLABS did post a blog entry that sheds a little more light on the data they're collecting, but it's worth noting that while MLAB engineers are confident in saying these slowdowns are due to business choices and not network capacity, they're not yet willing to definitively state why some transit routes suffer more than others:

"It is important to note that while we are able to observe and record these episodes of performance degradation, nothing in the data allows us to draw conclusions about who is responsible for the performance degradation. We leave determining the underlying cause of the degradation to others, and focus solely on the data, which tells us about consumer conditions irrespective of cause."

Still, despite some of the breathless rhetoric in the Guardian piece neutrality advocates still haven't obtained the AT&T lawyer proof silver bullet that indisputably proves large ISPs have been up to no good. I'm not entirely sure this can even be accomplished without access to raw, confidential ISP data and internal correspondence that may or may not even exist (how do you "prove" Verizon intentionally isn't upgrading a port?). Sure, most people can study AT&T and Verizon's behavior over the last thirty years and conclude that yes, this sort of thing would certainly be in their jackassery wheelhouse, but proving it is kind of important if you want these kinds of claims to be taken seriously.

Still, the fact that people are crunching and closely analyzing the data, combined with the new and novel threat of a regulator that's not asleep at the wheel, appears to have many of these companies magically and suddenly getting along famously. This suggests, contrary to broadband industry doomsday prognostications, that the net neutrality rules are having a positive impact on consumers, business interests, and the Internet at large.

from the walk-the-talk dept

You might recall that to try and thwart the agency's new net neutrality rules, former Verizon lawyer turned FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai launched a last-minute, facts-optional war on net neutrality and neutrality supporters like Netflix. Most of his arguments were nonsensically awful, like claiming that having real neutrality rules would somehow inspire North Korea and Iran to censor the internet, or that Netflix's fairly ordinary use of a CDN suggested it was somehow a hypocrite on the idea of net neutrality and was trying to destroy the internet.

But Pai's biggest complaint about the net neutrality rules was that the FCC wasn't being transparent enough, despite countless years of conversation and fully documented public input. Pai repeatedly and often proclaimed that the entire process wasn't transparent, even going so far as to hint that the White House's public Title II support was somehow part of a secret cabal with the FCC, even though as we noted at the time no rules were broken by the White House's entirely ordinary public statement of support for Title II.

If you know telecom company lawyers, you probably were keyed in early on that Pai and his staff's breathless love of transparency was a bit of a political show pony designed to rile up the folks that believe net neutrality is some vile, secret plot by government to ruin the internet. You also likely realized early on that when the shoe was on the other foot, this love of transparency would probably magically disappear.

And that didn't apparently take long. The House has been conducting an endless stream of political show pony hearings and "investigations" into the FCC's behavior on the net neutrality front under the noble pretense of reform, when the real goal is to punish the agency for daring to stand up to ISP campaign contributors. As the House digs through documents they hope will prove that net neutrality is an unholy, big government cabal (and not, as most realize, a genuine and remarkable grass roots movement) Pai apparently refused to provide documents to the FCC's own lawyer:

"Republican FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai is refusing to make his office’s documents available to the FCC’s Office of General Counsel as part of a House investigation into the agency’s net neutrality decision. Pai has instead promised to provide documents directly to the House Oversight Committee — though a panel spokeswoman said no documents have yet been provided."

Get it? Transparency is really, really important unless it doesn't coincide with partisan patty cake efforts to shame the FCC for finally doing its job and standing up for consumers. Of course in a few years when Pai's back at a telecom company or comfortably ensconced at one of their think tanks, this will all be forgotten, but if the rules get overturned in court by Pai's friends at Verizon, consumers and small businesses will be the ones left holding the detritus from Pai's noble, totally transparent time at the Commission.

from the criminal-minds dept

A growing number of consumers use VPNs to access out-of-market Netflix content, quite often because Netflix has yet to reach their market --something that's less of an issue as Netflix pushes to launch in 200 markets internationally before the year's end. However, even in launched Netflix markets, customers often still use VPNs to access the broader U.S. Netflix catalog. For Netflix competitors, the solution to this is fairly obvious (offer better service, more content, and stop using geo-restrictive licensing as a weapon), but of course many companies would instead rather focus on vilifying VPN usage itself.

Before Netflix launched down under earlier this year, Australian broadcasters and Netflix competitors had pouting over VPN usage down to a science, disparaging VPN users as the very worst sort of criminals, while attacking Netflix for not doing more to thwart VPN users from accessing the service (even though Netflix has been more than agreeable on this front). Copyright holders, as you might expect, have also pushed for new laws banning VPN use entirely, believing that makes much more sense than just getting to work competing with Netflix.

The latest example of VPN shaming comes from Canada. While Netflix launched there back in 2010, many Canadians still use VPNs to access the U.S.'s broader catalog of content. Bell Canada of course offers its own Internet video service called CraveTV, and finds any efforts to look for better content elsewhere a travesty of the highest order. New Bell Media President Mary Ann Turcke told attendees of a telecom conference last week that she had to give her 15-year-old daughter a talking to for using VPNs (after said 15-year-old daughter presumably informed mom what a VPN even was):

"To her dismay, Turcke’s younger daughter told her she had been using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to disguise her location and access Netflix Inc.’s richer U.S. video library, which is otherwise off-limits to Canadian subscribers. "Mom, did you know that you can hack into U.S. Netflix and get sooo many more shows?” she recalled her 15-year-old daughter saying. A scolding lecture ensued, putting an end to the VPNing at the Turcke house. She says more conversations about what’s right and wrong should be had at dinner tables across Canada."

From there, Turcke (who is replacing Kevin Crull, fired from Bell after he refused to let regulators he disagreed with appear on television) proclaimed that society as a whole really needs to step up to the plate and start publicly shaming VPN users so they understand what they're doing is an atrocity of the highest order:

"It has to become socially unacceptable to admit to another human being that you are VPNing into U.S. Netflix," Turcke said in a keynote Wednesday at the Canadian Telecom Summit. “Like throwing garbage out of your car window, you just don’t do it. We have to get engaged and tell people they’re stealing."
The industry can’t just rely on government and the broadcasting watchdog to police and solve this growing problem, she says. It’s up to ordinary people to tell their guilty friend, colleague or child that stealing is wrong."

Of course they wouldn't be "stealing" if companies like Bell were providing them with the content they want at the price consumers want it, something that fortunately doesn't entirely fly over Turcke's head:

"We, Bell Media, we, the industry, need to make our content more accessible. Just make it easy,” she said. “Viewers are demanding simplicity and they will seek it out."

Turcke should have just skipped to that conclusion without the lecture on morality.

from the gain-in-spain dept

Back in 2013, Techdirt wrote a story about how Netflix was using piracy as market research -- an approach that is as obvious as it is rare. The copyright maximalists doubtless hoped that would fail dismally, and that Netflix would see the error of its ways and join the industry chorus condemning piracy as a terrible scourge that impoverishes artists and causes society to collapse. Neither has happened, as an interview with Netflix's CEO, Reed Hastings, in El Mundo makes clear (original in Spanish, via TorrentFreak). Hastings confirms that looking at pirate sites to find out what people were interested in did indeed work out well in the Netherlands, and that this gives him confidence Netflix will thrive when it launches later this year in Spain -- a country that has traditionally had a high level of piracy:

I think that Spain is going to be one of our most successful countries. It has a population with a high level of [Internet] connectivity, which is accustomed to e-commerce and has given indications of being interested in our product. We are very optimistic.

He expands on why piracy is a help, not a hindrance, and how Netflix will manage to sell its services in the face of these free alternatives:

What's certain is that [piracy] has created a public that is accustomed to viewing content online. We will offer an alternative that is much simpler and immediate than looking for a torrent.

That's also what Hastings said in 2013, so clearly he has not found any reason to change his mind since then. These are exactly the kind of ideas that Techdirt has been promoting for years, but it's hugely refreshing to find a successful media CEO willing to say them on the record not once, but twice. It's a pity that so many other copyright companies still insist on fighting piracy, rather than learning how to turn it to their advantage.